Hopeless
by Changeling Fey
Summary: Hope is a captive Jew during the Holocaust. Snow is a Nazi commando. It's exactly what you think it is. Rated M for future chapters.
1. Chapter 1

**For Hazu, who first thought Roxas, LOL. Hope you enjoy it dearie.**

**Alrighty then. First off, I do not mean to offend anyone with this. Really, truly, I don't. If I do, then I'm so, so sorry. It was never my intention. Secondly, you are forewarned of angst. But, then again, what else would you expect from Nazi Germany? Thirdly, I've done little to no research for this, so don't assume what I'm talking about is actually true. Fourthly, you can trust that I will actually update this fic in reasonable amounts of time, for three reasons. One, it's short. Two, I have people holding me to it. Three, I'm reading**_** Night**_** in English class and that just makes me want to write this more. Four, there's a gay-basher that sits behind me in said English class and I'm trying to do everything I can to make her request a seat change. For example, leaving freshly written pr0n on the edge of my desk, where she can read it. **

**Kay. I think I'm done rambling now. Go enjoy.**

**Disclaimer: All characters do not belong to me. They belong to Squeenix and Nintendo respectively. All stolen plot bits property of Elie Wiesel.**

We're told to march. _Where? _I ask. _Where? _My mother asks. _Where? _The boy I've never met standing beside me asks. _Where? Where? Where?_ No one knows. All we know is that we're starving and exhausted, that our feet are bleeding and that our backs are breaking, that we can't last much longer like this.

All we know is that we're slowly dying.

*******

I truly don't know how many days passed before we arrived at the camp. Many, I think. Many endless, hungry, aching days during which I watched my family, my friends, people I've known from the cradle, slaughtered and beaten and trampled into the muddy, beaten ground. I watched and I watched and I watched unable to do anything at all.

When we finally stumbled to a stop within the confines of the towering electrified fence, I felt my legs try to give way beneath me, but I refused to let them. I grabbed my father's hand instead and indulged myself for a moment, let him take my weight.

Then I was straightening again as rows of Nazi soldiers with their solemn faces and their machine guns, clustered us together, and drove us--like cattle--towards the center of the camp, where a commanding officer waits.

His hair is long and the same shimmering silver as his coat buttons.

"Men to the left, women to the right," he barks, his voice deceptively smooth and melodic.

I move without even thinking twice about it, shuffling after my father--whose hand I still cling to. It isn't until we already too far to look back that I realize my mother's no longer by my side, that I never even told her goodbye.

I would've cried, if there'd been any tears left in my body to shed.

We're marched before another officer--this one has pink hair the color of bubblegum--who scans us over one by one and gives another direction for the beaten men to follow.

So far I've only seen tortured souls wander off towards a cluster of low, rotten buildings, and when my father's turn comes, he's sent off the same way.

I follow, because I don't think to let go of his hand, but another wraps around my elbow and tugs me back, nearly snapping my fragile arm in two. The pink soldier has grabbed me, and holds me easily. I don't even try to struggle, because he must weigh twice as much as I do.

"Not you," he says, emerald eyes looking me up and down and up and down and up and down…

Whatever he sees, I think he must like it, because the faintest hint of a smile quirks the corner of his lips. Actually, no, this shouldn't be called a smile. A smile shouldn't be able to chill me so deeply, shouldn't be able to make my soul quake.

"Hey," he calls, looking at someone over my shoulder. "Here's another one for you." And without another word to me I'm handed off to another man, who drags me off to the side and throws me into a tight knot of people--boys, really--that I hadn't noticed before.

*******

We wait there a little while, and a few more people join us, but I don't even look at them.

*******

A few minutes later, we're told to march. At least, this time, it's only across the camp.

*******

We file into a clinically clean, bright building--about a dozen of us. The ones of us hand picked from the ranks of hundreds upon hundreds of filthy, stinking Jews. I can't help but notice that the blinding white light spilling down from the ceiling just makes the rest of us look even worse. Our ripped clothes rattier, our faces dirtier, our eyes glassier.

I think we're in what used to be a hospital, but even if the rest of it is still in use, this wing has been abandoned by the sick, and left to us and a single doctor with glasses and a graying ponytail.

He tells us to form a line. We do. In the shuffling and rearranging I notice that all of us look nearly the same. Short, with frames that were skinny even before starvation turned them skeletal. Tiny, shaky hands and delicate features and huge eyes. The only thing that really sets us apart is the color of our hair.

Falling into place I find myself crowded on one side by a pair of boys that are obviously brothers, maybe even twins, though not identical. One has gold blond hair and the other sandy brown, both styled into messy spikes. Two pairs of bottle blue eyes scan the room, utterly terrified.

They're holding hands.

On my other side is a veritable giant among us, at least two or three inches taller than I am, and not quite as emaciated. His eyes stare after something no one else can see as he runs his fingers through his mop of bright red hair, over and over and over again.

The doctor tells us to strip without even glancing our way--his eyes are glued to his clipboard--and all of us do so without question. At this point the only use for clothes is warmth, and it's still hot enough outside that I don't even shiver as I let what's left of my pants drop to the floor.

Our rundown is quick and relatively painless. The doctor takes only a few moments with each, every once in a while scribbling something on that omnipresent clipboard. When he gets to me he bites the inside of his lip and grabs my cheek with his pincer fingers, tugging at a cut I got from another prisoner's knife. It's mostly healed by now, and he doesn't seem _too_ displeased with it, so he simply pokes a bruise on my arm with the pointed end of his pen and moves on to the brothers.

When he's done, he leaves without a word. No one tells us to stay put, but no one needs to. Besides, where are we going to go? We're tiny and underfed and completely, totally hopeless.

I don't know how long we stand there, no one daring to put their clothes back on, before the soldiers march in. There aren't that many of them, maybe seven or eight, I don't bother to count. And even though I know little of the army, they seem high-ranking. Their uniforms neat and pressed, adorned with bits and baubles, their smiles and laughs too loose and carefree to make them grunts.

It's been so long since I've heard someone laugh. I never imagined the first to break this streak would be a Nazi officer.

The doctor returns with them, and I hear someone call him Hojo.

Hojo snaps his spidery fingers and all of us jump to attention on instinct. You can hear the agonized moans of warped vertebrae forced to straighten. I bite back a whimper. The brunette brother doesn't bother.

"State your names and ages," Hojo snaps, his voice cold and careless. It's a voice that suits him, I think. Clicking this tongue against his teeth, he points at the first boy in line, the one nearest to him. "You first."

The boy--an angel child with brown hair and smooth porcelain skin--shakes his head, his eyes brimming with unshed tears, and jabbered something in Polish. I notice a blond boy down near the other end raise his hands to his gaping lips, his brows crimped in sympathy.

Hojo simply hisses, thumb clicking at the end of his pen. "Tell me your name, you worthless Jew."

The angel shakes his head even faster, the foreign words tumbling ceaselessly from his terrified, trembling lips. I think that he would fall apart if he didn't stop shaking soon. "_Nie rozumiem!_" he kept screaming. Even I, who knows not a lick of Polish, understand his plight. I wish I could help him, but can't think of any way I could.

"Answer me you son of a bitch," Hojo growls, tucking his pen into his coat pocket so that his bony hand is free to strike the angel across his perfect face. The crack sounds like a gunshot in the heavy silence broken only by the angel's tears and pleas as he staggers, and drops to his knees. His cheek is flushed angry red under the coating of dirt.

"_Prosze!_"the angel cries, his pretty little features twisted into a mask of pain and horror. "_Prosze! Blagam cie!_"

The soldiers watch without a word, and I can't see their faces through the fine mist that's begun to gather in my own eyes.

On my left, blondie drops his hand and lets his fingers curl into a fist. "_Powiedz mu swoje nazwisko!_"

The angel glances up at his savior with a look swelling with gratitude, and then turns to Hojo, struggling to his feet as he screams. "Pit! Pit! _Jestem_ Pit!"

Sighing, Hojo turns to the nearest soldier--a cruel looking man with long, tightly bound blue hair and a criss-cross scar slashed across his face, just under his cat-yellow eyes. "Can you understand what he's saying?" Hojo asks, ignoring the angel completely as he keeps right on screeching his name.

The soldier shakes his head without sparing the angel a glance. "Not at all."

Hojo gives a tight, business-like nod and slips his pen from his pocket, scratching something down as he says, "Lieutenant Xigbar, dispose of him, will you? He is clearly damaged mentally."

A scarred man with a long, dark ponytail, a missing eye and a heavy gun waiting in his hand, steps forward and bows his head in respect. His lips are pulled taut in a rigid line. "Yes sir."

None too gently, he crosses the distance and snatches Pit's bare arm, tugging him towards the door. The angel screams and wails, the sounds he makes so distorted by fear that I can't tell if they're pleas in Polish or if they're simply mangled cries.

It doesn't really matter either way. Once the thick wooden door shuts behind the Nazi, it's almost completely muffled. All that's left is a faint whining, and I do my best to block that out. For the most part, I succeed.

I'm pretty sure the Polish blondie is about to fall right to pieces though.

Not that Hojo cares any. He readjusts his glasses so that they perch on the end of his beak nose, and fiddles with the papers on his clipboards. "Now, the rest of you. Names and ages. And don't make me wait."

There follows a string of names and faces and ages, only a few of which I listen to, and even less that I remember.

"Luneth, sixteen." A tallish boy--among us--with a silvery ponytail and a thick Hungarian accent that half strangles the German pronunciation.

"Arc, fifteen." He is the smallest of us all, with a mussed cap of auburn hair and a bright face more given to smiling but with more reason to frown.

"Ingus, fifteen." Solemn and stone-faced, with pale gold hair. He holds his chin high.

"Sora, fourteen." The first of the brothers, the brunette. His voice is so soft and timid that I can hardly hear it with him just a few feet away. He sounds and looks younger than he is, but, then again, who's to say he isn't lying?

"Roxas, fourteen." The blond brother. He speaks loudly, more clearly than Sora, his eyes staring straight ahead at the ranks of soldiers but seeing none of them. I hear the slightest accent, but I'm too ignorant to be able to place it.

When my turn comes I swallow my hatred, swallow my fear and my panic and my desperation and say, as strongly as I can manage, "Hope, fourteen." I see no reason to lie, and I don't think I could pass for older anyway.

The redhead beside me doesn't bother looking away from whatever has him fixated. "Roy, sixteen." Out of all of us, he sounds the least scared. He sounds almost…resigned. And that scares me more than it should, especially when I'm surrounded by so many terrifying things.

"Demyx, seventeen." All I can see from my angle is odd sandy-blond-brown and a sweet, musical voice, but I remember it all the same. Why? I have no clue. Does it matter?

Once we've all said our piece Hojo treats us to a stiff nod and the quickest of glances. "Good." Then he turns right around to address the soldiers. "Now, men, all of them have been inspected and are clean," he says. It takes me longer than is reasonable to realize he is referring to us. It takes me even longer to realize that I can guess now why we're all here, and that I'm horrified by the thought. "Take your pick. Highest rank first."

I watch with wide unblinking eyes as, one by one, the soldiers approach our line, scan us up and down like we're cattle put out to market--calculating and judging--and deplete our ranks, one by one.

A massive man with blue hair and laughing eyes hiding behind his impassive face takes Roy at first glance. Xigbar picks out Demyx when he returns, his suit no dirtier for the dirty work he'd been sent to do. It isn't long before the brothers--Sora and Roxas--are pulled apart, Sora shuffling off with a silver-haired soldier and Roxas trailing after one with flaming red spikes.

There are hardly any of us left when the second to last man steps forward, boot heels click-clacking against the scuffed tile. He is tall and powerful, his entire body padded with a thick layer of muscle underneath his uniform--just a little less neat and pressed than the others. His shaggy blond hair is bound with a head wrap below the standard-issue cap he wore, and his chin is blurred with a gentle fuzz of stubble.

He walks right up to me without even looking at any of the others. As he stops, he folds his arms over his broad chest and grins. His teeth are china white and nearly blinding. His eyes are clear, shimmering blue. The same blue as the snowmelt river that wound through a backyard in the foothills of the mountains, where someone who wore my face and bore my name once lived.

I'm nearly bowled over by a wave of hopelessness and panic and homesickness so strong it makes me want to truly vomit.

But I don't think this Nazi would appreciate a shoe shine with stomach acid, so I swallow down the bile that pokes and prods at my throat with burning, scratchy fingers.

Those clear blue eyes watch me for half a second that feels like half of forever before the soldier finally speaks.

All he says is four words, but those four words completely flip my life around, as if hadn't already been twisted enough.

"I'll take this one."

**Review please, kthxbai. **


	2. Chapter 2

**Thanks so much to all you wonderful reviewers, and to everyone who added this to their favorites. You guys make my day.**

**Alrighty, well, I did some research, actually. And, apparently, this fic isn't as inaccurate as I thought it was. According to what I could find, anyway. **

**Warning: This is the chapter for which the fic is rated M. It isn't…explicit, but it isn't for the faint of heart. Ye have be warned. **

**Once again, I mean this as no offense to anyone. Really. I am not denying the Holocaust, I am not defending the Nazis, I am not trying to sugarcoat what happened to the Jews. So, if you are offended by this, you're going to be more specific as to how if you want anything to change. **

I think I know now what they wanted us for, so I'm surprised when the soldier tells me to redress before he leads me away from that bright, clean room and out into the dying sunlight.

Sunset is supposed to be beautiful, but now it simply looks like blood spilled across the toothed horizon. I can't see the beauty anymore.

The soldier claims his name is Snow, like the white stuff that falls from the sky, he says. He laughs, like it's funny. I snort in agreement, even though it's not. He brings me to an abandoned barracks, tattered, scarce possessions scattered everywhere. A ragged blanket, a shredded sweater. I think that the captives that live here must be working.

I wonder how long they'll be gone.

What happens next is mostly a haze of color and sound and pain. I don't know if that's the lightheadedness, or repression. It doesn't really matter, does it?

He closes the door, checks that it's locked. My heart punches at my throat. He grabs my arm, throws me down on one of the beds. The stony cot slaps the breath from my lungs, and I gasp new air in as he falls on top of me, his weight pinning me there.

I fight not to scream when his hands attack my clothes, as his mouth attacks my neck. Who would come? Even if someone heard, if someone came, who would bother saving me? My life is worth less than dirt.

I can't help but moan as his ragged nails bite into my skin, his fingers asphyxiating my wrists, and then my shoulders, and then my waist. I think he likes it when I moan, because he rumbles with satisfaction, like a cat purring.

I'm not scared, because there's nothing for me to fear anymore. Certainly not death. I've looked into the Reaper's soulless black eyes and spat in his face. His touch holds no horror for me now. How could it? If God has not abandoned his creation, if he truly does exist. If Heaven exists, then why do I still linger here. Even if it doesn't, even if death is simply long sleep after eternal sleep, then I still would welcome it. Because in sleep, you feel no pain.

My breath catches as my trousers disappear in conjunction with his. Maybe I'm a little scared.

But just a little.

There's dull, fuzzy pain all around me, swaddling me like a cocoon. My eyesight is eaten away at the edges, rimmed with soft tendrils of black. The world takes on a sort of dark tint, like I've put in a pair of colored lenses. It's sort of pretty.

He rolls me onto my stomach, his grip rough.

The only thing that swallows my scream as he enters me is his hand. I feel myself explode. It's like I've been beaten over the spine with a white-hot bar of iron.

Is it sad that I know what that feels like?

It feels like I'm dying. In fact, I think I must be. How else can something feel this horrible? This has to be killing me. If it isn't, part of me wants it to be.

Pain and pain and more pain. Bolts of pain, burning pain, body-racking shudders of pain. I want to scream so badly that it makes me sick, but his hand is clapped tight over my mouth, and eats up any sound I might make. I think that maybe if I could scream, it might not be quite so bad.

But I can't. And it is.

Snow doesn't care though. He pounds into me like he'll die if he stops. Slams me into the mattress until my head spins and stars dance. My heart hammers double-time, choking me.

I thought I knew pain before, but I was wrong. If what I felt before was pain, then this is something new. I think it needs a name, but my mind is too smeared to chase after one.

I know I'm bleeding before I see any hint of blood. I feel it slip over my bare skin--warm and slick and smelling like old pennies. It trails down my shaking legs, pools around my toes.

The world goes black for a little bit, but the black doesn't save me. I can still feel every touch, every jolt of agony, only now it's blind. Now I can't brace myself for it.

I hate the black.

I don't notice right away when it's all over, because the pain doesn't end. It isn't until I lie there for at least five minutes, soaking in a puddle of blood and grasping after the hem of life's vanishing skirt, that I realize Snow is gone. That I'm all alone.

A shaky, half-broken sob dances from my trembling lips. I try to move, to get up, to run until I can't run anymore, to wash the new dirt from my soul, but more pain than I can handle curls me into a knot, pulls whimper after whimper from my thin little chest.

I think I pass out again, because the black leers at me from behind my eyelids.

When I open them at last, there's a face in front of me. A pale face. A pretty face. A vaguely familiar face.

Crystal blue eyes smile at me while soft lips frown. Silky blond hair brushes over my raw, bloody cheeks, and a gentle voice ventures through the fog to where my mind has retreated, where I hide what's left of me.

It shakes me, rocks me back and forth. Tries it's very best to drag me back. "Hello?" it says, heavy with worry, with urgency. "Are you okay? Hey, kid, listen to me. Can you hear me? Answer me. Who did it?" A rough, callused hand clamps down on my bruised shoulder, and rattles me. I jolt to, my eyes jumping fully open.

"Sn--Snow," I choke, the words like knives stabbing deep into my throat, my chest. But I have to get them out, so I swallow down the long-acquainted pain. "Who're you?" My voice slurs, but I don't have the breath to try again.

Golden eyebrows tug together. The face regards me with a mix of tenderness and apprehension. "My name's Cloud. I'm going to fix you up. Okay kid?"

I swallow thickly, achingly, and hunt down a scrap of breath. "I'm Hope."

For the first time, I watch Cloud's lips hike up in a shallow smile. "You sure are."

**Review please dearies.  
**


	3. Chapter 3

**Thank you, thank you, thank you, to all you lovely, lovely reviewers. And to everyone who's added this to their favorites. I adore you all.**

**Sorry this chapter's a bit late; I had a giftfic to write and a speech to give and yadda yadda yadda, EXCUSES. ENJOY.**

**This chapter is dedicated to Miguel, even though there is a distinct lack of Snow butt. Happy birthday dearie, and I apologize for the bullshitted writing.**

I pass out again, and this time it could've easily been a week before I awake. When I finally swim through the dark fog, drag myself back from the edge of unconsciousness, I am not alone.

There are two hands on me: one lingering against my forehead and the other cinched about my wrist. They feel nice, even if they make my bruises whimper in protest.

I can hear voices--the owners of the two hands--talking over me. Quietly, like they are worried they'll disturb me. It's…novel, to have someone care about me.

"Do you think he'll be okay?" asks a voice that rings with something familiar. The name twirls away, laughing, before I can pin it to the face my mind's conjured. Pale, pretty, framed by ragged blond spikes.

"I believe so," says a new voice. This one is soft, and slippery smooth like silk.

I try to open my eyes, and find them stuck shut, eyelashes glued together. I want to wrench them apart. I want to see. But most of all, I want to chase away the black lurking behind my eyelids and the memories that walk hand in hand with it.

Horrible, agonizing, bloody memories. Memories that make me want to scream until there's not a trickle of air left in my lungs and I pass out. Until I can't remember anymore.

"Thank God," the first voice breathes. The tattered bit of prayer rattles me to the core. I have this deep, unshakable feeling that such a word as God should not be uttered in such a place as this, where Satan takes his afternoon tea. It strikes me as wrong, unnatural even. It makes me sick.

Sicker than I already am, anyway.

"He just seems so fragile…" the first voice continues, trailing off at the tail end. Roxas? Was that his name? No…Roxas was the boy I saw that first day--the twin. This is someone else.

"This life has toughened him, I think," says that silky voice, closer than I expected it to be. Warm breath kisses the curve of my cheek, and I jolt, running on pure instinct.

Instinct screams at me to stop and lie still when just that tiny jump sends pain racking up and down my spine. The pain is sudden but nauseatingly familiar, like the first trickles of bile before you vomit.

"Is he coming to?" the Roxas-look-a-like asks, quickly, almost eagerly. That confuses me. Why would anyone be eager for me to wake up?

_No,_ I want to say. _No, I'm not "coming to." I can't outrun the black._

And it's true, I can't. That bolt of pain deepens spots of the darkness that I'm seeing until hazy, grayish shadow sinks into thick, impenetrable black.

I hear a few last words before unconsciousness reclaims me.

"Be patient." The sentiment is punctuated by a stark, weary laugh. "He'll wake up when he wakes up. Until then, he was hit over the head with a board."

I only remember the man's name as I fall asleep.

_Cloud…_

"Hope? Hope? Are you okay? Can you hear me?" The voice echoes inside the empty bowl that is my skull, my mind razed to ashes by horror and pain.

Sluggishly, my eyelids flickering slow as syrup, I wake, and watch as the blurs of color that make up the world sharpen into shaky lines. I can see a face ghosting overhead--white skin discolored by abuse and cheeks pressed inwards by starvation. Scraps of limp gold hair tickle my cheek. _Cloud._

I groan, trying to clear the gunk from my throat. "I can hear you," I say, blinking once, and then once again. There's a deep ache gathered just behind my eyes. It just sits there, thick and heavy. I can't chase it away, just like I can't chase away the dull ache that covers me like a shroud. "Where am I?"

It isn't Cloud who answers my question, it's a voice I've heard before but cannot name. _…like silk… _"You're in the hospital," it says, off to my left. I see Cloud glance up at its owner, and follow his lead, even though the vertebrae in my neck crackle with indignation.

There's a young man standing there, who's nearly as short as I am, though the craggy, unforgiving lines feathering from about his eyes and lips give a misleading illusion of years he can't possibly have. He has ragged, shortish hair that flops in his eyes and changes color with the light. One second it's periwinkle blue, the next it's slate gray.

I've never seen him before in my life. "Who're you?"

He studies me with tawny eyes and nudges his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. "My name is Zexion," he says. "I am the doctor's assistant." He certainly looks it, with his pristine lab coat falling stiffly from his skinny shoulders.

Cloud chooses this moment to toss in his two cents. "Zexion fixed you up," he says, looking back to me. "And let you rest here. I'm Cloud." _I know,_ I want to say, but I don't. He must figure I've forgotten, but that seems ridiculous to me. How in God's name could I ever forget? "I found you, and brought you here."

I want to nod, but know it will hurt, so I don't. "Yes, I remember." One thing is bugging me. "Why, though?"

Cloud shrugs, and I see that he's wearing a tattered navy shirt that's faded with carelessness and a scarf that seems too delicate a green for a place like this. It almost makes me laugh, for some strange reason. "I couldn't very well leave you there to die," Cloud tells me. "When I've fallen far enough that I'll abandon a broken, bleeding boy to his own fate, somebody had better just shoot me then and there."

This time I do nod, and it _does_ hurt, but I suffer through it because I've known so much worse. "Th--thank you," I choke. The words taste new on my tongue, which disturbs me.

When the man smiles, something stirs inside me. I have no idea what it is and no clue how I could find out, but it's warm. It's nice. I want it to last. It feels almost like…compassion? "It's nothing. Now, I think you should probably rest," he tells me, glancing up at the doctor for confirmation. "Right, Zexion?"

The doctor nods, and though there's hardly a scrap of emotion in his gaze, I'm not frightened by him in any way, shape or form. He just…isn't threatening. "Right." When he turns that blank stare to me, I think I see the corner of his mouth licker with the slightest of smiles. "Don't worry, no one will be kicking you out anytime soon."

Another question bubbles to the forefront of my brain, and I don't push it aside because I fear the monster lurking behind it, hiding in the shadows of my memory. "Why are _you _helping me? Aren't you with the Nazis?"

A snort flees from his throat--humorless and cold. "'With' is an inaccurate word. 'Pressed-ganged' is probably more appropriate." He shrugs. "Besides, I owe Cloud a favor."

I turn to Cloud, not caring that I'm shamelessly fleeing the inevitable remembering. "You'd use a favor from a Nazi doctor to help me?"

More shrugs. I wonder how long I'll have to stay here before I answer every question asked me with a careless hike of my shoulders. "How else am I going to use it?"

"Don't you have any family that you could help?"

Cloud's head swings slowly, sadly from side to side, but it's saved from being too pitiable by the watery smile stretching his cheeks. "My parents are dead, and my younger brothers would approve, I'm sure."

This sparks a bit of memory that--luckily enough--doesn't bring everything else screaming forward. I'm so, so grateful for that. "They wouldn't happen to be twins, would they?" I ask, the faces bubbling about inside my head. "A blond and a brunette?"

I watch as Cloud's sadness crumbles to pieces and hope bursts forth like a ray of sun popping through a ceiling of clouds. "You've met them?" he asks, leaning so far forward that I nearly suffocate. "Where are they? How were they?"

I feel bad because the truth is awful, but I refuse to lie, so I cycle through the memory fragment and relate it as I see it happen. "They were with me when I was pulled from the ranks. The blond was taken by a soldier with red hair, and the brunette--one with silver." I lower my eyes and my voice, and whisper, "I'm sorry."

The hope withers just as quickly as it grew, but he smiles anyway and says, "Don't be. What could you have done?" A dry, bark of a laugh falls from his mouth. "Now, sleep. You won't heal any other way."

And I do, because I'm so, so tired.

**:D Next bit be up pretty soon, since it was originally was supposed to be part of this chapter but I got lazy and had to study.**

**Review all!**


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